Festival is time for accordion to shine

Bene Medina leads a group including Pedro Castañeda and Robert Armendariz at the Conjunto Heritage Taller. It is at the center of Conjunto music preservation in San Antonio and offers music classes on instruments including the accordion and the bajo sexto. less

Bene Medina leads a group including Pedro Castañeda and Robert Armendariz at the Conjunto Heritage Taller. It is at the center of Conjunto music preservation in San Antonio and offers music classes on ... more

Photo: Photos By Helen L. Montoya / Conexión

Photo: Photos By Helen L. Montoya / Conexión

Image
1of/7

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 7

Bene Medina leads a group including Pedro Castañeda and Robert Armendariz at the Conjunto Heritage Taller. It is at the center of Conjunto music preservation in San Antonio and offers music classes on instruments including the accordion and the bajo sexto. less

Bene Medina leads a group including Pedro Castañeda and Robert Armendariz at the Conjunto Heritage Taller. It is at the center of Conjunto music preservation in San Antonio and offers music classes on ... more

Photo: Photos By Helen L. Montoya / Conexión

Festival is time for accordion to shine

1 / 7

Back to Gallery

Juan Vera's accordion has a habit of catching the light coming through the windows of the Conjunto Heritage Taller on South Presa Street.

For two years, Vera has been a member of the Taller, a workshop that offers classes in conjunto instruments including the accordion.

Somehow, even through half-drawn green and yellow curtains, each piece of golden trim and every rhinestone sporadically placed on the green and purple box finds its shine, and lights up the bright orange walls. His is a flashy instrument, and even alone in the small room, as Vera tinkers with a new melody, it is clear that this music was made for dancing.

“They're storytellers,” Vera says of the instrument. “They tell stories about pain, sorrow and happiness. You just have to go inside the music. It's the music of families. It's the music of communities.”

Juan Tejeda, an instructor of music and Mexican-American Studies at Palo Alto College, says the accordion initially made its way into the United States on the backs of immigrants from several countries, including Poland, Germany and Ireland.

“It has always been a kind of working man's instrument,” he says. It's relatively cheap, and one man can accompany himself.”

When the accordion was paired with the bajo sexto, a Spanish/Mexican string instrument, the unique sounds of Tejano and conjunto music began to take shape.

“It's the only instrument I can think of that has managed to travel the world and make it into so many cultural traditions... It's the music of the people. It's cheap, portable, it's lively and upbeat and it's loud,” says Cathy Ragland, artistic director of the International Accordion Festival, an annual gathering in San Antonio celebrating the accordion with music from around the world.

The 12th installment of the festival will be held Saturday, Sept. 14, and Sunday, Sept. 15 at La Villita. The free event showcases traditional accordion sounds while featuring artists carving out a place for the squeezebox in the next generation.

At the Taller, Bene Medina, who teaches traditional conjunto music, does the same. He strums at a bajo sexto, imploring new accordionists with unsure fingers to find the right notes, sometimes more aggressively than others.

Rito Peña flashes an embarrassed grin as Medina stops the music.

“Again!” he shouts, humming a melody.

While Vera has been playing the accordion for only two years, Peña has five under his belt.

At 14 years old, he has already opened for conjunto great Flaco Jimenez.

“I started when I was nine,” he says, adding that no one in his family plays a musical instrument.

“I'd say the music we play is for the older generation,” he says. “I don't see many people my age playing instruments like this. They think it's not cool.”

Ragland, however, says a few bands are finding ways to blend traditional sounds with new styles of music to create something that bridges generational gaps.

“How young people are interacting with the music and involving themselves in the tradition while reaching out and blending with new styles to make them the global citizens they are, this is how these traditions survive,” Ragland says, citing local groups Piñata Protest and Los Nahuatlatos as examples of musicians fusing the accordion with new sounds..

The result, she adds, can lead to discovery.

“(That) inspires people to go back and rediscover traditional music,” she says.

mdwilson@express-news.net

More Information

Catch it!

International Accordion Festival

What: An annual gathering celebrating the accordion and its role in music around the world returns after taking a year off. The event featuring all things squeezebox, includes musical acts performing both traditional and newer sounds on two stages.